Huan Guan

Huan Guan (fl. 1st century BCE) was a government official of the Western Han dynasty of China. He was the author of Discourses on Salt and Iron, a debate held in 81 BC at the court of Emperor Zhao of Han.

Biography
Huan Guan was a Han government official, and in the first century BCE he wrote Discourses on Salt and Iron, a work of literature that discussed state interventions on the Chinese economy. In an excerpt from the piece of literature, he said of contemporary China, "Now that the state has monopolized the salt and iron trades, most of the tools provided to the workers are hard and brittle and the responsible government officials are often not available to take complaints. Good implements are hard to come by...some of the poorest peasants now have no choice but to till the soil with wooden plows and cannot afford salt to season their food". He described the mistakes that the previous Emperor Wu of Han had made in his economic reforms in his debate, which was a major part of literature relating to Chinese technology.